Codeslinger I post too much
Reputation: 1
Joined: 11 Oct 2007 Posts: 3652 Location: Midwest, United States of America
|
Posted: Wed Mar 03, 2010 10:50 pm Post subject: Chances of being born within the last 100 years |
|
|
Number of humans who have ever lived on Earth: 106,456,367,669
World population mid 2002: 6,215,000,000
That gives us about a 6% chance of living in 2002.
While the number may seem small, it's actually quite higher than I would have imagined. Humans have been around for thousands of years, but the population was so low compared to now that you would've had a relatively minute chance of being born in a specific time before 100-200 years ago.
This does help explain why we were born in this generation, that we are not so unbelievably lucky that the only way to explain to our luck is to blame it on God or a higher power. There's actually a "decent" chance of being born to see the year 2010, about 1 in 20 chance.
But this is of course assuming that humans on earth are the only possible beings we could have been born as. If you consider other earth-like planets or even the animals on our own earth, the chances decrease dramatically and we are once again lucky beyond all reason.
|
|